Your Child's Happiness ????-2007

We at As A Dodo today wish to nod our heads in understanding at the tragic situation of parents this Christmas and offer you our sincere condolences for the imminent passing of Your Child's Happiness, which is expected to slip into the twilight on 25 December 2007 at precisely the moment they realise that "Santa" has been unable to secure for them a Nintendo Wii games console.

Your Child's Happiness was born shortly after his or her entrance into the world as a gurgling, blood-covered mass of pink flesh, in all likelihood at about the time he or she first managed to latch on to mum's breast and tuck in to a hearty, colostrum-laced meal (and certainly some time after that berk in the mask decided to give them a smack on the behind).

From that moment on, Your Child's Happiness grew and grew - taking innocent pleasure in anything from the new hanging mobile placed so carefully over their crib to all the swearing which putting the bloody thing up in the first place caused mummy and daddy to engage in. The sources of joy for your little one were many and various: being tucked up in a nice warm blanket, listening to bedtime lullabies, screaming itself hoarse in the middle of the night just when you'd finally got back to sleep, being sick all down the back of your best suit just before that interview for the new job.

As the years drifted slowly, oh so slowly, by so Your Child's Happiness burgeoned, safe in the knowledge that a single quivering lower lip at the right moment (or, failing that, several minutes of screaming in the middle of the toy shop on a busy Saturday afternoon) would get you exactly where they wanted you. Whether it be lengthy sessions of "I spy with my little eye" as you sat in the traffic jam outside Heathrow, endless hours of "The Wheels on the Bus" going round and round, or desperate attempts at bribery with E-number-laden sweeties whilst waiting at the supermarket checkout, you would do anything to ensure Your Child's Happiness endured.

Yet as Your Child grew, their Happiness became harder and harder to maintain. Soon exhausting sessions of tickling and Maisie DVDs lost their allure. Not even 19 seasons' worth of The Simpsons on a permanent loop (including the first 7 seasons when it was actually worth watching) could guarantee to keep a smile on Your Child's face, and ever more desperate measures were needed - right up to the point that you seriously considered selling that "spare" kidney of yours to fund the purchase of the necessary pony/computer/other-overly-expensive-item that would be heading off to the glue factory/eBay mere months after its purchase. Christmas in particular became a day fraught with danger, every second of present-opening time bearing the threat of a strangled cry of "But you KNOW I don't like Barbie/Grand Theft Auto/crack cocaine any more. I HATE you." and a tearful exit from the room, or your being forced to issue a series of dark and accusatory looks at your useless partner for failing to remember to buy the batteries as Your Child forces you to search through every remote control in the house for a spare set of AAAs.

This Christmas, though, was going to be different. This Christmas you were going to purchase the gift everyone told you was guaranteed to provide hours of pleasure to the recipient: a Nintendo Wii. And so it was that you set off in early December, confident in the knowledge that you would soon return with games console in one hand and a certain future for Your Child's Happiness in the other. That the dream was to prove as evanescent as a taxi's "for hire" light on a cold evening in December was not your fault. How were you to know that the mighty gaming giant seems only to have been able to manufacture seven of the consoles to supply the whole globe's demand? You spent hours trying to redeem yourself - scouring the internet for supplies, ringing round for any sign of this year's near mythical - yet absolutely mandatory - Christmas present, hanging around the alleyway behind HMV ready to mug the delivery men on the off-chance they might be carrying a Wii. Yet the RSI in your mouse-clicking finger and the chilblains on your extremities (not to mention the criminal record) were all to no avail. There will be no Wii for Your Child this Christmas.

Your Child's Happiness will be buried on 25th December under a mound of torn wrapping paper, floods of tears and a look from your offspring that will let you know that they will never, ever be able to trust you again. It will be survived by Your Child's Resentment, your partner's despair and several desperate trips to the drinks cabinet on your own part.

North East England c 7,500 BC - AD 2007

Purveyors of fake tan and mini-skirts, underperforming football clubs and philanthropic property developers desirous of a favourable outcome at the planning committee are today fleeing southward, following the tragic death of the North-East of England, which has slipped into the fog-covered Tyne mere days after giving birth to a spectacular series of cock-ups ranging from the loss of 25 million child benefit recipients' financial data through the spectacular collapse of Northern Rock and all the way up to a series of "unlawful"⁽¹⁾ donations to the Labour Party (not to mention recent performances by Newcastle United FC, Middlesborough FC and Sunderland AFC).

The North East was first discovered by humanity in or around 7,500BC, when wandering tribes - smitten by the region's beauty and frozen in place by its biting weather - decided to settle near the Tyne and Tees. Little is known of what they did over the next few thousand years but when the Romans arrived in the region in about 46AD they described a people covered in strange dyes and little else, travelling round in small warbands ... a tradition still upheld in Newcastle town centre every night around pub kicking out time.

Over the millennium that followed, North East England would be a place of conflict, seeing scores of battles between Roman and Celt, Celt and Pict, Angle and Briton and Viking and Anglo-Saxon. To this day experts continue to question the causes of so many battles, though the heavy betting remains on the bloke in the silly helmet from the stag party knocking over the mead-flavoured Bacardi breezer of "the fit bird with the big jugs" from the hen night who'd been dancing with the squaddie back on leave and everything kicking off from there. Things carried on in much the same way following the arrival of the Normans, with North East England spending the ensuing centuries being fought over by Scots and English rulers, most of these conflicts ending in the ceremonial handing over of Berwick-on-Tweed to the winner.

Despite all this fighting, North East England was also a thriving cultural centre, with a strong monastic tradition. The monks were initially based at Lindisfarne, though they were to flee inland from the island in the late 9th Century due to fear of Viking attack (apparently one of the monks had made the mistake of "looking at Ivar the Boneless's bird"). Over the years North East England gave the world The Lindisfarne Gospels, the poetry of Caedmon, the Venerable Bede's History of the English People and Paul Gascoigne's rendition of Fog on the Tyne.

With the Industrial Revolution, North East England's vast coal resources were to fuel Britain's foundries and help the birth of new technologies (so much so, indeed, that the phrase "taking coals to Newcastle" came to mean much the same as today's "bringing idiots to The Weakest Link"). The North East also gave birth to George Stephenson's legendary Rocket, the early steam locomotive that - at a top speed of 29 miles per hour - could outpace many a modern GNER intercity train.

In the 20th Century the North East, one of the world's greatest centres of industry, became home to a powerful labour movement. As Britain's power began to wane and its industry was ravaged by the Great Depression, hundreds of Geordies set out from Jarrow to walk to London to lobby Parliament ... though when they got there it turned out that Parliament was otherwise engaged and Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was "washing his hair".

In the 1960s and 70s the region went from fame to infamy following tales of council corruption and dodgy building deals funded by bungs from architect John Poulson. By the 21st Century, however, as our lawyers have asked us to make clear, the North East of England was, happily, no longer associated with allegations of corruption or improper payments. Instead it was to become irrevocably connected with the cock-up, giving birth to a series of managerial errors that would astonish even The Office's David Brent. Whether it be the kind of management that encourages civil servants to pop discs containing secret data in the post, with the password handily written on the discs themselves, that allows banks such as Northern Rock to rack up debt faster than a failing NHS Trust even in the face of a global credit crunch, or that happily channels political donations through third parties even after the "loans for peerages" scandal - all were to be found in the North East. With the stumblebum nature of the region confirmed by the performances of its leading football teams and its reputation now centred on the inability of Newcastle's inhabitants to understand that freezing weather entails wearing more than a boob tube, the North East of England became too ashamed to hold its face up in public any longer and sloped off into the North Sea after weighting its boots with the last of the region's coal.

The North East of England will be commemorated at St Jimmy Nail's Church of the Crumpled Viz. The congregation will sing Dance Ti Thee Daddy from When the Boat Comes In and the theme from Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? before getting into a punch up after someone accidentally knocks over the communion wine.

⁽¹⁾ "unlawful" is a technical political term - it means exactly the same as "illegal" but somehow sounds better.

The People's Data c 3,800BC - 2007AD

Men and women across Britain are today frantically checking their bank statements for fraudulent withdrawals in memory of The People's Data, which has been tragically lost in a sea of Whitehall incompetence, taking with it the bank records of 25 million individuals and the chief of HM Revenue & Customs, Sir Paul Gray.

The People's Data was first collected in ancient Babylonia in around 3,800BC. Every seven or so years the Babylonian rulers took a census, recording the number of people, their stores of butter, honey, milk, wool and vegetables and their livestock, the data not only giving a useful index of Babylon's prosperity and aiding tax collection, but also explaining where all that dung filling the streets had come from.

From the Babylonians onwards, the collection of The People's Data proved a popular pastime for kings, emperors and other rulers, not only keeping them informed of the health of their city states/kingdoms/empires but also providing a useful distraction from their other favourite pursuits such as wars and having sex with close blood relatives. Indeed so popular were censuses that even God himself got in on the act, ordering Moses to take the number of all the men able to bear arms of the tribes of Israel⁽¹⁾ - a process which proved particularly difficult for Moses as God, being omniscient, could always tell when he'd miscounted.

And so The People's Data continued to be gathered up all the way through history, through the time of the Romans and the Domesday Book and on towards the present day. With more and more data being collected, its storage became increasingly problematic. Indeed, by 1890 the data for the US Census had to be recorded on punched cards - the holes recording either the data of each individual or the passage of the buckshot directed at the census taker when he attempted to obtain that data from backwoodsy types with a hatred of big government and a love of the Second Amendment. Many feared that the collection of so much data in such a small place might lead to it falling into the wrong hands, though such fears were allayed first by the many precautions taken by the US government and, secondly, by the fact that any attempt to read it would have required a card-reader the size of a small house.

It was the arrival of computerisation that saw an explosion in The People's Data. Soon governments across the world were trying to record every last bit of The People's Data they could. And no government was more enthusiastic in this regard than that of the UK, which sought to record everything from people's financial details to the weight of their rubbish bins, their DNA fingerprints, inherited diseases, inside leg measurements and (doubtless) their favourite football teams and sexual preferences. Yet all the while they insisted that the ever-swelling People's Data was in safe hands, despite the fact that those hands belonged to the same people who gave us The Millennium Dome, The Northern Rock Crisis and Government Statistics.

Perhaps, then, we should not have been surprised when those safe hands proved to be butter-fingered, allowing the financial records of more than 25 million Britons to slip from their grasp and into the choppy waters of the Customs and Revenue internal mail system. So it was that the Government was forced to declare The People's Data lost, presumed in the hands of internet fraudsters and identity thieves.

The People's Data will be buried in several computers in Russia, where it will rest in peace until such time as things have quietened down a bit and it can be flogged off to the highest bidder. It is survived by The People's NHS Records, The People's CCTV images and The People's ID cards.

⁽¹⁾ Except the Levites^(2)
(2) Who were instead told to go and manufacture denim jeans, or something ... we may have nodded off at that point in our RE lessons.

Child Benefit 1946 - 2007

Child Benefit has been found dead after HM Customs and Revenue lost the personal information of nearly 25 million UK citizens in the post - fatally compromising the integrity of both the government and the Child Benefit system and leading to the impending bankruptcy of the nation's children in a financial disaster even more embarrassing than the Northern Rock cock-up.

Child Benefit was the proud baby boomer offspring of the Family Allowances Act, as Britain struggled to raise itself from the rubble of World War Two, determined that every child in Britain should escape the crushing poverty of pre-war generations (who can forget the financial ruin caused by the collapse of Lord Snooty plc or the day Billy Bunter's tuckshop franchise business was passed into the hands of the receivers?). Now parents could have five shillings a week extra for every child to spend on powdered milk, powdered egg, 10 powdered Capstan Full Strength and a bottle of black market rum (powdered).

But ten years later Britain's children had never had it so good as they wised up to the fiscal opportunities presented by Child Benefit and set about boosting the economy as they invested heavily in The Eagle, Meccano and gobstopper industries.

As the government doled out the pounds, shillings and pence throughout the Sixties every child was able to experience the white heat of technology for themselves as they purchased Lego like there was no tomorrow, all the while listening to the latest The Pink Floyd album on their new stereo record players whilst dropping some of that really good acid they could now easily afford.

By the Seventies, child poverty was definitely a thing of the past only dimly remembered by one's parents, as kids cycled to school on brand new Chopper bikes (flashily buying a new Chopper every day) or bounced to their investors' meetings on Space Hoppers whilst high on speed.

During the Eighties, as pensioners grumbled about their meagre handouts, children across the country managed their portfolios on brick-sized mobile telephones - buying heavily into shoulder-pads and cocaine off their brick-sized mobile telephones - and, in the Nineties, chilled out on some really good E, moved into more ethical investmnents and emerging new dotcom and gaming businesses.

By the noughties, the nation's children were living the high life as The Benefit ensured that the nation's children did not go without the essentials of modern life - text bundles, knives and crack pipes. So when the National Audit Office asked HM Revenue and Customs for the Child Benefit database a junior official at their HQ in Tyne and Wear burnt it onto 2 CDs (filling up the extra space with the new Arctic Monkey's album) and popped it, unrecorded in the post, in a breach of government security guidelines not seen since John Prescott was told where and when Cabinet meetings were taking place.

Chancellor, Alistair Darling, led the frantic search for the disks but when they failed to turn up down the back of the sofa or being used as coasters on the coffee table he called in the Metropolitan Police. Fortunately, further embarrassment was spared as the Armed Response Team hurtling towards Tyne and Wear was recalled at the last moment before they could "stop and search the Brazilian bastard".

But the damage had been done and the security of Child Benefit had been fatally compromised - the system that had promised to care for Britons from the cradle to the grave had dropped the cradle in the grave and Child Benefit was no more.

Child Benefit will be buried in a pauper's grave at the St Charles of Dickens Church of the Means-Test. The service will be conducted by the Reverend Jack Douglas after the Reverend Darling lost his eulogy somewhere between the vicarage and the library, turned up for the funeral on the wrong day at the wrong church and his trousers fell down. The congregation will sing Hymn 312 You've Got To Pick A Pocket Or Two as the hat is passed around.

Child Benefit is pre-deceased by the nation's confidence in the government and is survived by the laughter of David Cameron, the laughter of Tony Blair and the scheme to introduce Identity Cards - but probably not for very much longer.

The Music Business c.130,000 BC - AD 2007

The Music Business, that offshoot of capitalism that took one of the finest art forms ever created and turned it into a means of producing untold profit for a handful of tone-deaf accountants and Bono, has stuffed its last royalty cheque up its nose with the news that the members of Radiohead are allowing fans to download their new album, In Rainbows, for as little⁽¹⁾ as they like.

From the dawn of man, Ug the Yodeller was using his crude larynx and small brain to hum simple melodies to himself even before he could string a sentence together (a tradition honoured by many stars of the popular music scene even to this day). When he started banging rocks together he found a new way to keep warm - dancing to the new beat around the collection of kindling and logs still forlornly awaiting the emission of a single spark, while a Neanderthal with well-tailored animal-skins, a bigger cave and a much younger girlfriend went round with a hat collecting "contributions".

For millennia, mankind thrilled to the sound of a skilful melody or well-modulated chorus, or sobbed its heart out to a minor-keyed dirge - especially when they discovered that the rights to their minor-keyed dirge had been bought by a large corporation and used to promote a mobile phone company.

As classical composers relied heavily on wealthy patrons to finance their musical exploration, so modern musicians strove to make it to the toppermost of the poppermost, all the while investing their hearts and souls... in the financial security of their managers, music companies and drug-dealers. While many still made music for their own amusement⁽⁵⁾ there were always those willing to capitalise on the fruits of introspective creative types ability to play G-C-D on the mastodon marimba / lute / Stylophone... namely managers, music companies and drug-dealers.

Record companies became increasingly adept at maximising their return from musicians. If legendary bluesman Robert Johnson had walked on past that famous crossroads to the big house on the hill with the jacuzzi full of models he may have come away with less talent than the Devil offered him, but he would at least have been offered a small advance which he would never be able to repay to record an album of duets with Elaine Paige.

By the 1970s and 80s music lovers were ignoring The Music Business's warning that home-taping was killing music, preferring to believe that Peters and Lee, The Goombay Dance Band and Milli Vanilli were murdering music without any need for assistance. By the noughties, as more and more artists dared to seize control of their own work, fans were able to cut out the corporate middlemen and keep the music fresh and real, buying or downloading their favourite tracks direct from bands' websites⁽⁶⁾ - or even cut out the bands as well by downloading from their peers' hard disks with Napster, Kazaa, Limewire et al. As The Music Business began to whine about being ripped off, bands even began to offer their music for free on MySpace thanks to the generosity of notoriously hippyish, not-for-profit flowerchild Rupert Murdoch.

Despite a last-gasp attempt to milk the final few millions from the musical cash-cow with televised karaoke contests in which the bullying to the point of tears of the mentally-ill, tone-deaf and celebrity-obsessed was confused (for money) with the abstraction and analysis of the human condition through organised sound, the Last Post had been illegally ripped for free and sounded.

With everyone now able to knock out a new choon on GarageBand and post it on t'internet where it could be lovingly ignored by millions, The Music Business began to resemble an over-developed dinosaur, with poor eyesight and under-developed teeth, sadly munching on a few leaves in the moments before the giant asteroid struck Earth. So when Radiohead decided to give their album away for free - aided only slightly by the squillions the band had already earned from conventional releases - The Music Business held its last A & R convention in the Bahamas and choked to death on its own vomit in the wee small hours of the morning whilst listening to a loop of the opening instrumental bars of Pink Floyd's Money mixed with the opening bars of the late, great Ronnie Hazelhurst's theme from Are You Being Served?

The Music Business will be buried at the Church of St Matthew the Accountant. The service will be conducted by the Reverend Simon Cowell and the congregation will sing The Sound of Silence by Gareth Gates, just as soon as the lawyers can work out who owns the rights. The Music Business is survived by Music. And Simon Cowell.

⁽¹⁾ or as much...^(2)
(2) or they can buy the box set for £40 / $80...^(3)
(3) if they're sad obsessives with no lives...^(4)
(4) what's that you say? "They're Radiohead fans"? I take your point.
⁽⁵⁾ in James Blunt's case the "laughing at the tone-deaf and cretinous nature of his fan base all the way to the bank" kind of amusement.
⁽⁶⁾ the most popular download of all time being the 23'19" version of Mike's Fallen off the Stage Again Jam by Phish, recorded in the third set of the second night at the Timothy Leary Amphitheater, Berkley, CA - rendered totally different from the previous night's version by an angry shout during Trey's fifth solo of "Hey, you played that last night, man!" followed by the sound of a man in his late 30s in a tie-dye T-shirt being beaten to death with his own glowstick for "Like, ruining the mellow vibe, dude".

Credit c.1000 BC-AD 2007

Credit, the system of getting free stuff on tick and then 'forgetting’ to make the repayments and moving house very quickly, has gone to the great debt collection agency in the sky, following the news that the worldwide Credit Crunch has made life difficult not just for homeowners but also the people who lent them all that money to buy a one-bedroom shoebox in Pinner.

Credit was born in around 1,000BC, when Ancient Babylonians grew tired of exchanging their wives for goats and bulls for asses and instead began exchanging their goods and services for credit receipts drawn up on clay tablets, which were not only easier to stick in the pocket of one's robe but also much less likely than the goats, bulls and asses to leave a nasty mess behind while they were in there.

Thanks to its convenience, Credit soon became a way of life across the globe, with everyone from Roman Emperors to humble Chinese paddy-field workers more than happy to 'buy now, try to avoid the bailiffs later'.

By the eighteenth century 'tallymen'⁽¹⁾ had begun to offer their goods for sale in return for weekly payments. It was not long, however, before Credit began to tire of this itinerant life and decided to go into business in the City, signing on at banking institutions the world over and offering itself out to the highest bidder. By the middle of the twentieth century, Credit was everywhere and consumers were happily signing away the rights to their property, chattels and small children to finance their credit cards, store cards and London Transport Oyster cards.

Yet all was not well. So popular had Credit become that everyone was demanding it ... and so soft-hearted were the institutions for whom Credit worked that they were reluctant to refuse it to anyone at all ... even if they did happen to be a penniless Alabama five-year old with a credit-history that would make Enron blanch and a desperate need for a $2 million mansion and a gold-plated Nintendo Wii. Credit found itself spread thinner and thinner⁽²⁾. As hordes of US homeowners began to default on their loans, Credit began to contemplate its end. Fearful, Credit decided to leave its old friends in the financial institutions behind and go off to lick its wounds at the Bank of England.

Thus it was that when UK building society Northern Rock found itself short of a couple of million shillings to pop in the gas meter, its search for Credit initially proved fruitless. Yet Credit, noble creature that it was, was unwilling to see the tragic little multi-million-pound-organisation- which-had-foolishly-gone-on-bunging-out-mortgages-left-right- and-centre-even-when-every-sane-being-on-the-planet-could-see-a- credit-squeeze-was-coming fail, and so it came down from its lonely Threadneedle Street retreat and offered to lend Northern Rock the money it needed ... after first requiring it to fill in a loan application and have its credit history examined by a surly teenager on the other end of the phone whilst listening to a tinny rendition of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

For all its nobility, the loan was Credit's last mistake: a flood of desperate applications from financially over-stretched borrowers up and down the country caused a run on the Credit markets. And so the Credit Crunch gave way to the Credit Crumble and Credit was no more.

Credit will be buried at St Vorderman's Church of Your Home Could Be At Risk If You Do Not Keep Up Repayments. The undertakers will deliver the casket to the church just as soon as they see the cash… up front… The service will be conducted by Alvin Hall and the congregation will sing Money by Pink Floyd, Money by Berry Gordy (in the style of the Flying Lizards), Money, Money, Money by Abba and Sgt. Northern Rock Isn’t Going To Help Us by XTCCJ.

Credit is survived by Cash On Delivery, Pay As You Go and Crippling Debt.

NB Your mortgage may go up as well as up. Remember your home, bank or building society may be at risk if you do not keep up repayments.

⁽¹⁾ so-called because they kept a record or ‘tally’ of what people had bought on a wooden stick ... which also proved useful in persuading them to pay up every week.
⁽²⁾ not to mention squeezed into a series of financial vehicles of such complexity and opacity that the only people who ever understood them are now either mad, dead or earning a fortune working out the answers to late night TV phone-in quizzes.

Office Work c. 250BC-AD2007

Office Work, the ceaseless toil in darkened rooms which has kept workers occupied from nine-to-five each weekday has finally been chucked into the "out" tray of life, after being crushed by the pressure of the many other vital office activities such as gossiping, playing minesweeper, social-networking and staring out of the window.

Office Work began - in the Western World at least - in Ancient Rome, whose rulers were among the first to decide that the task of sorting facts and figures, keeping records and preparing accounts was far too onerous for the priests who had been carrying it out (a strain perhaps evidenced by the fact that - whatever had actually happened - the facts, figures and records always showed the rulers were wrong and the priests were right and the accounts always showed the rulers owed the priests another 400 goat sacrifices and half the contents of the treasury).

From the time of its birth, Office Work thrived, with Roman office workers throwing themselves eagerly into the tasks of gathering data on everything from the latest building works at Ostia to fluctuations in the lark's-tongue market and the rise and fall (and rise and fall) of the orgy sector, their enthusiasm reinforced by the head of human resources frequently being also the chief recruiting officer for the gladiatorial arena.

Over the following millennia, Office Work did well in the Near and Middle East, where it was supported by the extensive bureaucracies of Byzantium and the Islamic Caliphate, ensuring that there would always be a suitable workplace for hard-working scribes, accountants and a good place to keep middle-managers away from the rest of humanity. Things did not go so well in Europe, however, where Office Work proved less popular than having wars and dying of plague. It was not until the arrival of the mediaeval chancery that Office Work could find a place to go about its business in Europe and even after the Renaissance there was still confusion about the office's role, with the inhabitants of Florence foolishly deciding to fill their offices with paintings by Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael⁽¹⁾ and charge people to see them.

Nonetheless, by the nineteenth century, Office Work was as popular in Britain as anywhere else, with clerks happily quitting their meagre beds, bidding fond farewells to their consumptive wives and crippled children and dashing into work at 5am in order to spend the next 14 hours perched before high desks on high stools, warming themselves in the glow from their candle as they toiled away for enlightened masters such as Mr E Scrooge to keep themselves out of the workhouse.

Steadily the lot of the office worker improved and Office Work became far more popular, reaching its height in the late 1980s and 1990s thanks to better working practices and employers (as well as the tragic death in Britain of Factory Work following a series of industrial accidents⁽²⁾). True, there were distractions - samizdat lists of "50 Best Essex Girl Jokes" had to be passed secretly from desk to desk, clandestine affairs had to be conducted, groups of secretaries had to gather with their Diet Cokes to ogle surprisingly well-toned and constantly-shirtless hod-carriers - but yet Office Work got done.

It was the rise of the office computer during the 1990s that was to prove Office Work's undoing. At first it seemed a boon - doing away at a stroke with a scores of trips to the stationery cupboard for a new pen and countless hours spent struggling to insert a new typewriter ribbon - but its effects were insidious. No sooner had Office Work found a vital job to be done than the computers would fail, condemning office workers to hours spent twiddling their thumbs and having staple gun fights while the heroic forces of the IT department did battle with recalcitrant servers. Even when the computers functioned, matters were no easier for Office Work: with the advent of email, workers were forced to tear themselves away from their spreadsheets to catch up with the latest round-robins from their mates about hilarious new videos on YouTube or answer urgent money-transfer requests from Nigeria, with the advent of Microsoft Windows untold ages simply had to be spent playing minesweeper and solitaire. With the arrival of Web 2.0 and social networking software it was all over for Office Work: there was simply no time for completing spreadsheets, drafting documents or sending out request sheets and invoices when office workers had to spend all their time "poke"-ing their friends on Facebook, listing their cats' favourite pasta shapes on MySpace and trying to fend off enquiries from middle-aged men pretending to be teenagers on Bebo. So it was that Office Work passed out of existence, unnoticed and unmourned.

Office Work will be buried at St Reginald Perrin's Church of the White Collar. The Reverend Ricky Gervais will perform that David Brent dance ... again. No one will attend as they're all listing their favourite movies on Facebook.

⁽¹⁾ as well as other artists who were not also members of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
(2) the accidents being incompetent management, strike-addicted unions, poor government, globalisation, Thatcherism and the fact that traditional British production standards meant that by 1976 the content of most scrapyards had been "Made in Britain" about six weeks earlier.

Barbie's Pet Dog Tanner 2006-2007

A grief-stricken Barbie was today reported to be locked deep inside her ramshackle mansion on Sunset Boulevard, mourning the death of what was perhaps her last and closest friend, her pet dog Tanner. Neighbours of the reclusive billionairess, once beloved of every little girl's heart,⁽¹⁾ report that yesterday they heard the sound of a single gunshot followed by sobbing long into the night. Representatives of the Los Angeles Police are understood to be investigating.

Who can say why it was that Barbie Millicent Roberts - the former nurse, fashion model, teacher, princess, geisha, top female executive, Hollywood star and astronaut whose smallest fashion choice once sent millions of children⁽²⁾ rushing to the stores - decided to spend her final years with a pet dog? True, the ageing diva had been behaving ever more eccentrically since her unfortunate break-up with off-and-on life-partner Ken⁽³⁾, allegedly becoming involved in a torrid affair with her surf-loving pool boy Blaine and indulging in one-night stands with a series of rugged military men with grasping hands including GI Joe and Action Man. True again, her failure to match the box-office success or tabloid notoriety of the new breed of sassy starlets such as the notorious Bratz girls - two of whom were recently arrested after being found in the back seat of their White RC Cruiser while their driver was under the influence of Tixylix - had led to more and more frequent visits to the plastic surgeon (where her decisions to have her breasts reduced, waist enlarged and head shrunk flew, it must be said, in the face of both modern fashion and the existence of Angelina Jolie). Yet with her many horses, ponies, cats and other pets many were shocked when Barbie's representatives at Mattel announced in 2006 that from now on she would be devoting her time to caring for her new pet dog Tanner and that shock was redoubled when it was learnt that Tanner was such a disturbed animal his favourite pastime was eating his own plastic faeces.

Yet it must be admitted that from the moment she acquired him, Barbie and Tanner were inseparable. Wherever Tanner went Barbie was right behind him, pooper-scooper in one hand ... and feeding bowl in the other. It was this inseparability, rather than his odd eating habits, that was to cause Tanner's downfall for it was while he was accompanying his mistress on a tour of the sweatshops factories of China (happily unconstrained by the sort of Red Tape whose passing was so recently announced in this very organ) that Tanner first showed signs of illness. Bringing her skills as a former veterinary surgeon to bear, Barbie swiftly realised that her pet, though having escaped the toxic effects of the lead-laden fumes from the paint which filled the factory, had ingested an unsafe magnet and would have to be put down. Despite her grief, the 49-year-old former airline pilot leapt into her plane and flew herself and her beloved pet back home, where it is understood Tanner died at the hands of the former sharp-shooting cowgirl.

Tanner will be buried at St Rolf's Plastic Animal Hospital. He is survived by billions of other Barbie accessories, all available at a store near you.

⁽¹⁾ not to mention the hearts of many older women and men with a worrying devotion to the doings of a 29 cm high plastic doll.
⁽²⁾ and those worryingly-devoted adults.
⁽³⁾ rumoured to have been caused by Ken's refusal to "accidentally" release a sex-tape of himself and Barbie in order to get her some coverage in the tabloids.

Red Tape c 100,000BC - AD2007

Red Tape, the bureaucratic binding that has for millennia tied up the people of Britain in rigid rules and regulations, has today been pronounced dead by Conservative MP and multilingual karaoke star John Redwood.

Red Tape was born in around 100,000BC following Ug the Bureaucrat's decision to insist that Ug the Hunter fill in a twenty-seven page risk assessment form before building his new smilodon trap ... sadly resulting in Ug the Hunter's death after he was savaged by a sabre-toothed tiger whilst still trying to work out what to put in section 3(b)(iv)(aa). Very quickly it became an important part of Neanderthal life and local government, providing a common evil for the community to grumble about yet, at the same time, providing health and safety conditions which proved vital – especially following Ug the Inventor’s discovery of fire.

Throughout history nothing got done without Red Tape: King Harold had to file a claims form following his accident with William the Conqueror’s arrow, Henry VIII’s divorce papers ran to so many volumes that he had to build Windsor Castle to house them (but only after a 12-year legal battle with local peasants who claimed it would spoil their panoramic views of the Slough plague pits) and even Neville Chamberlain wasn’t allowed to appease Hitler without having in his hand a piece of paper.

Always controversial, by the 20th century Red Tape had become the Marmite of the political and economic world: beloved of faceless bureaucrats, trade unionists and anyone who didn't fancy being sacked on the spot for failing to come in to work after losing their head in that unfortunate accident with the defective electric fire their boss ordered them to use to dry the toxic lead paint with which he'd insisted they cover over the cracks on the cut-and-shut job for the new kiddies' school bus, whilst loathed by industry, employers who didn't see why the loss of an arm should prevent someone working the rest of their 20-hour shift on the meat-packing line and politicians of all stripes eager to find an easy way to promise billions of pounds of savings.

Down the years politicians of all stripes - provided such stripes had been properly applied in accordance with the Political Stripes Act of 1937 as amended by the Journalistic Cliche (Amendment) Order of 1993 and the EU Striping Standardisation Regulations of 2004 - sought to win over the public by promising to do away with unnecessary bureaucracy and liberate the people from the tyranny of Red Tape and somehow free up vast amounts of money without ever having to mention tax cuts. Thus it was perhaps unsurprising that in 2007, with the Conservatives lagging behind Labour in the polls for the first time since the election of David Cameron as party leader, Mr Cameron contacted John Redwood - one of the Tories' most feared Vulcans senior figures and invited him to do away with Red Tape, ushering in a new era guaranteed to free ordinary Britons from the kind of petty-minded governmental meddling that had stopped kids happily climbing up chimneys and pensioners licking dustbins for sustenance.

Eager for the kill and belting out his battle cry of "Easing the restrictions on data protection, employees’ hours and health and safety conditions will provide the equivalent of a £14 billion tax cut and incentive to businesses", Mr Redwood levelled his trusty nuclear laser pistol at Red Tape and doubtless would have blown it halfway across the universe had he not been asked to fill in the necessary forms for his nuclear laser pistol licence first.

Red Tape will be buried at St Kafka’s Church of the Bureaucratic Nightmare following production of docket Z678907/34/X/iv, stamped by the relevant authorities and countersigned by the deceased. On its final, duly certified, expiry and interment it will be survived by As A Dodo's newly hired six-year-old asbestos sweeper, chimney cleaner and chainsaw juggler ... though probably not for long.

The US Dollar 1785 - 2007

Economists are today scanning the fiscal horizon for any sign of the The US Dollar which is understood to have vanished without trace on a journey through European currency exchanges.

It was in the mid-to-late 18th century that the people of America began to tire of the system of pounds, shillings and pence (abbreviated - for reasons of Latin (and insanity) - as "L.s.d" and just as likely as the drug of that name to cause the users to hallucinate thanks to the extraordinary complexity of a system in which a pound was divided into 20 shillings, and each shilling was divided into 12 pence) and decided to tell the Brits back home in the UK exactly where they could stick it ... along with taxation without representation, all those German mercenaries they kept billeting in American homes and several tons of tea.

When the British finally took their American cousins' advice and waddled - somewhat uncertainly - away from their shores, the newly-liberated United States of America was left in desperate need of a currency of its own. So desperate was that need, indeed, that in 1785 the Congress of the Confederation was to take the route followed by so many American celebrities in recent years, and adopt a young Hispanic currency - The Dollar - as its own.

The Dollar was soon being raised by its new parents in the ways of the Enlightenment. Gone was the weirdly contorted system of L.s.d., replaced by a clear-browed, strong-thewed metric subdivision - enabling every citizen of the new republic desirous of giving their neighbour their "two cents" to know exactly how much that two cents was worth without having to resort to logarithmic tables or advanced calculus.

Over the following centuries The Dollar would come to bestride the fiscal globe, backed by a land rich in resources, natural and mineral, and by an industrious and inventive population. By the mid-twentieth century, The Dollar had become the hard currency of choice from everyone from oil magnates and international jet-setters to purveyors of currency-backed affection in South-East Asian backstreets, Moroccan hash-dealers and rebellious young citizens of communist states eager to be able to afford a pair of Levi's jeans on the black market.

Yes, The Dollar had its bad times: it got caught up in successive flirtations with assorted financial systems, from the gold standard to the fiat standard, even experimenting with bimetallism in its early years; its value rose and fell with mineral discoveries and oil crises, stock market surges and crashes, it splashed millions here there and everywhere in the 1920s yet could hardly spare a dime in the 1930s, it bubbled up with the arrival of new technology and new dealing methods and slipped away on the suds of Enron and Worldcom. Yet through feast and famine, war and peace, The Dollar still kept to its adventurous ways, journeying across the globe in the hands of the rich and the poor and in the back pockets of millions of plaid-shorts worn by troops of oversized American tourists eager to belittle foreigners and complain about the lack of decent water pressure in the hotel shower.

Despite having seen off so many disasters before, The Dollar that was to meet the crises of the mid-noughties was not the currency it had once been. Now it found itself assailed on all sides: on one side by the costs of the war on abstract concepts by their very nature incapable of defeat terror, on another by the surging price of oil, on yet another by a faltering industrial base threatened by increased competition from China and India, on another still by a set of banks eager to loan out billions of dollars to anyone capable of signing their name (or if not capable of signing their name, at least capable of finding their ass with both hands ... or maybe one hand ... okay, let's leave the ass-scratching thing and just get you to make your X on the dotted line).

With US credit fatally undermined by years of sub-prime lending, The Dollar's journeys into foreign currency markets were to become increasingly fraught with danger. In mid-July 2007 it flew out into the European and British exchanges, apparently without a care in the world. Tragically, it was last seen plunging to record lows over the rocky mountains of international finance and is believed to have crashed into the side of a euro.

The Dollar is survived by millions of British tourists amazed to find that a £10 lottery win will get them three week's stay in a suite at The Four Season's New York and the whole contents of Bloomingdales, Saks and Tiffany's, with enough change left over for a 12-course meal at Alain Ducasse.

The Sandwich c.1760-2007

The Sandwich, that quick and filling meal that has sustained day-trippers, office workers, students and lazy busy men and women for nearly 250 years has curled up at the corners and passed on to the Great Bin in the Sky with the news that many pre-packed sandwiches contain more salt than a Roman centurion’s bank account.

It was the 4th Earl of Sandwich who, in the 1760s, first placed some cold meat between two pieces of bread to sustain him, either - according to reliable sources - during his marathon cribbage sessions at the gaming table, or - according to less reliable sources - as he worked through the night on important government business at his desk, or even - according to sources whose reliability is on a par with national rail timetables or Jenson Button's Honda - because his wife was away and he didn’t know how to work the microwave.

Soon The Sandwich had moved on from its humble origins as gourmets adapted the basic recipe of cold meat between bread to create some of the most mouth-watering delights known to man, woman, child and dog begging at the table: including such delights as the chip butty, the dripping sandwich and the ready salted crisps double-decker.

The Sandwich had its darkest hour during World War Two when the advent of rationing which forced plucky Britons to fight the war on a diet of powdered sandwiches and (if they had the coupons) the bread sandwich – a delightful combination of bread between two slices of bread.

In the post-war years Britons were free to indulge themselves once more, experimenting with such delights as the chip and crisp sandwich and the dripping double-decker. In Scandinavia meanwhile it was indulging itself in a series of open relationships with a diverse range of fillings. Over in America, US sandwichologists began to experiment with new hybrids such as The Sub (so-called because its size and weight were crucial in its use against the Japanese navy), Peanut Butter and Jelly (the sticky peanut butter stabilising the wobbliness of the jelly) and the Club Sandwich (so-called because its size, density and those annoying plastic swords they stick through to make them hold together, made it the foodstuff of choice for busy burglars and muggers eager for a handy snack with which they could also brain their victims ).

Soon sandwiches were spreading across the globe, their wrappers boasting unlikely combinations of thai-style prawn and onion chutney, roast wildebeest and camembert or tandoori chicken and lychee, while their contents inevitably revealed a semi-identifiable meat-style substance plus some limp lettuce all drowned in cheap mayonnaise.

But despite its soaring popularity and, seemingly, hardy constitution when an investigation into the salt content of pre-packed sandwiches found that some such as the Pret a Manger All-day Breakfast, the Asda Extra Special Yorkshire Ham and Hawes Wensleydale and the Kwik-Price Sodium and Chloride Salad contained more than a third of the daily recommended intake of salt, The Sandwich’s arteries began to harden and it was left on the shelf for the last time.

The Sandwich will be buried at Newport Pagnell Service Station where mourners will try to eat piles of mayonnaise-slathered crayfish and rocket, ham and cheese and pastrami and gherkin without the aid of their traditional - slightly-soggy - bread-wrapping.

Bank of England £5 Notes 1793-2007

Bank of England naturalists have today announced the passing of the last known £5 Note on Britain's streets, leading experts to claim that £5 Notes have died out in the wild.

Bank of England £5 Notes or "Fivers" was born in 1793 during the Napoleonic Wars, at a time when British armed forces were becoming the laughing stock of the French for their pantaloons' habit of falling down due to the heavy weight of gold coinage in their pockets⁽¹⁾. Initially, Fivers found it difficult to find their ecological niche as small currency, possibly due to the fact that they were some 8½ by 5½ inches in size, though this did mean a relatively small company of men could fashion their wages into a handy get-away glider in an emergency.

Despite their size, for more than 160 years Fivers remained unchanged, much to the delight of leather manufacturers, who could sell two cows' worth of hide to make a single wallet, and the disgust of thieves and robbers who faced the risk of suffering a hernia if they tried to steal much more than fifty quid.

In the 1950s, Fivers - at last realising, like so many of Bernie Ecclestone's girlfriends that small can be beautiful⁽²⁾ - reduced their size and came to sit beside smaller-denominations such as One Pound and Ten Shilling Notes in purses, wallets and back pockets across Britain. Together they spread throughout the financial system, enabling people in the street to perform the everyday task of buying and selling things without needing to carry the coinage content of a Las Vegas casino's worth of slot machines around with them.

Happy in their lot and unaware of the economic pressures around them, Fivers went gaily about the business of small business. Times, however, were changing. Though the Fivers - unlike the Shilling, Ten-Bob Note, Crown and Guinea - survived the changes to the economic ecology brought on by decimalisation, successive devaluations and rampant inflation placed ever greater pressure on the smaller notes. Pound Notes and Fivers found themselves bundled into ever more pockets and passed ever more swiftly from hand-to-hand. By the 1980s the One Pound Note had breathed its last, replaced by the brash and chunky new Pound Coin.

Despite all their efforts and a strong captive breeding programme at The Bank of England, Fivers' time was soon to be cut short. For while there were hundreds of millions of Fivers waiting to go out into the streets of Britain, the High Street Banks charged with delivering them into the hands of the public and thus enabling the small economy to function properly, found themselves unable to perform the task of stocking their hole-in-the-wall ATM machines with the little notes. This was due partly to the banks being distracted by such things as (a) constantly surveying interest rates so that they could bung up mortgage and loan costs while failing to increase their savings rates, (b) keeping a weather-eye open for the slightest opportunity to sting their valued customers a tenner for going a single penny into overdraft and (c) flogging mortgages to people who would never, ever be able to repay them. Mainly, though it was down to the fact that the banks couldn't be arsed to fork out the cash to get someone to load the ATM machines twice a day instead of once.

So it was that fewer and fewer Fivers were seen in circulation. Those few that survived were poor specimens indeed, inevitably grubby, torn and battered, frequently the survivors of accidental journeys through the boil wash or intentional journeys up a minor celebrity's nose, often held together by little more than sellotape and hope, their metal security threads dangling limply from their sides.

The last Fiver is believed to have passed away yesterday, when repeated attempts to get it accepted by a London Underground ticket machine resulted in the note being torn into shreds and a nearby member of LU staff receiving ten minutes of sustained abuse for something that really wasn't his fault.

The Last Fiver will be buried at The Church of Our Old Lady of Threadneedle Street. The minister will bury The Fiver in the back of a cash register before handing the congregation a pint, at which point the congregation will respond "A Fiver?! For a pint!? I'm not drinking in Central London again - I'll tell you that for nothing".


⁽¹⁾ The habit of British forces getting caught with their pants down was recently honoured in the moving ceremony whereby 15 members of the Royal Navy were captured by Iraqi forces and ceremonially stripped of their iPods.
⁽²⁾ Admittedly, this is most often true if small also happens to be a multi-millionaire.

Scotland c.55BC–2007AD

Scotland, that mighty nation located inconveniently to the north of England, which gave the world whisky, a fair legal system, an excellent education system, the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution, Billy Connolly and Gordon Brown, has taken the high road for the last time, following the publication of reports by the Federation of Small Businesses and the OECD showing Scotland is the worst performing small country in Western Europe thanks to its terrible health record and appalling life expectancy.

The conception of Scotland is, like so many other conceptions, clouded in a haze (though not, unusually, of alcohol). Doubtless it had been around for many millennia, quietly getting on with whatever it was doing, before it first came to the world's notice in about 55BC when Julius Caesar's forces successfully invaded Britain (shortly before successfully leaving as quickly as they could the moment they realised what a cold, damp and dark little island it was). It was with the Emperor Claudius's decision to invade again in 44AD (thus proving himself to be the drooling idiot his critics accused him of being), that Scotland really began to make itself known - largely by its habit of sweeping down into England for a bit of looting and pillaging. By 121 AD this habit had become so irritating to the Romans that the Emperor Hadrian decided to build a wall from Northumberland to Cumbria to contain the loosely affiliated tribes to the north thus provoking one of the world's longest neighbourhood boundary disputes and inadvertently providing the spark for Scottish nationhood.

Over the following centuries relations between Scotland and its southern neighbour would prove fractious, with England constantly sidling up to Hadrian's wall and peering jealously over it to eye up Scotland's beautiful glens… and bonnie morags. Down the centuries, the two countries would frequently come to blows, each invading the other repeatedly. In 1296, England's Edward I even succeeded in stealing the sacred Stone of Scone, not only depriving the nation of the artefact on which each of its kings had been crowned but also denying the Scots the recipe for one of their most exquisite items of patisserie.

Despite such incursions, the Scots busied themselves with becoming a powerful small nation. As a sign of their pride, the people dressed themselves in the favourite accessory of the British traveller, the long tartan rug, thus signifying their deep desire to proclaim the greatness of the nation across the globe, while oppressing all the locals and never, ever returning home.

Although the Act of Union with the Auld Enemy in 1707 failed to halt Scotland’s flowering, as philosophers, scientists and artists made their country the cradle of the Enlightenment, the first signs of strain in Scotland’s health were to show when Bonnie Prince Charlie failed to wrestle control back from the English – leading directly to the Highland clearances as Scottish mountains were offered at knock-down prices to English landlords. But, for the next two centuries, though subjugated, Scotland continued to extract its revenge on the English by exporting its shortbread, Rabbie Burns and prime ministers.

By the 1970s the years of struggle had begun to weigh heavily. When North Sea oil was discovered off the coast of Norway Scotland, it was wickedly siphoned off by the English, denying the Scots vital revenues to maintain their infrastructure and access to the premium grade oil necessary to maintain their world-renowned cuisine. Soon, unscrupulous establishments sprang up offering traditional Scottish fare deep-fried in inferior oils (and sometimes even whisky). A daring retaliatory raid at Wembley during the Home International against England, saw a squad of crack Scots reclaim some English soil (and turf and goalposts) in retaliation for the theft of their oil, but it was too little too late. The annual invasion of Edinburgh every summer by English comedians drained the country of vital resources (mostly whisky and accomodation), and a desperate attempt by the Scottish Health Board to reverse the decline in public health drastically backfired when their drama-documentary series Rab C Nesbitt failed to appal right-minded Scots.

A last gasp attempt to wrestle Scotland away from the English gave Scotland some hope in its dying moments when the SNP swept to an indecisive victory in the Scottish elections. But even the ban on smoking in enclosed public places failed to halt the decline of the nation’s health as plucky Scots huddled together in doorways for warmth (in June) as they stoically puffed their way through a packet of 20 whilst preparing to roll themselves back haim to an evening drinking lager on the sofa while tucking into a vegetable, fruit and indeed food-free 20,000 calorie meal and the prospect of a premature grave.

Scotland will be buried at the High Kirk of Irvine Welsh, the service will be conducted by the Reverend Begbie and the congregation will sing “Lager, Lager, Lager, Lager, Lager”.

Petty Cash c.100,000BC-2007AD

Shopkeepers are today ringing up their tills, bank tellers collecting their P45s and the homeless asking passersby if they can "spare an electronic cash card reader" as they lament the passing of Petty Cash, which has today fallen out of the pocket of history and plummeted through the grating of oblivion, following the announcement of a new generation of touch-and-pay cards.

Petty Cash was born in about 100,000BC, the smallest and weakest child of Money - the revolutionary scheme to exchange livestock, shiny things or unwanted family members for goods and services. No sooner had early man found a way of purchasing the necessaries of a neolithic hunter-gatherer's life, from simple tools and weapons all the way up to bashful (in the literal sense) brides or even flatscreen cave paintings, than he began to ponder how he was to purchase the littler things in life, such as the odd root, a few berries, or a swift pint of fermented mammoth milk without having to break the piggy (or, rather, wild boar) bank. So it was that he hit on the idea of dividing up his shells/lump of red ochre/bits of jewellery/smilodon teeth into smaller pieces, and thus Petty Cash was born.

Petty Cash was to prove an instant hit (except with smilodons, who quickly became tired of being punched in the mouth by passing cavemen in search of some spare change for a packet of mammoth scratchings from the bar). It was light, it was portable and - unlike previous forms of wealth such as livestock or slaves - it didn't start to smell funny if you forgot to feed and water it regularly.

By around 550BC, money was being doled out around the Mediterranean in the form of salt, making Petty Cash even more popular as medical advisers realised that using more than a teaspoon of your wages a day was likely to cause a massive rise in blood pressure.

It was with the arrival of coinage that Petty Cash was really to come into its own. Not only was it now easily portable, it was also in a form ideal for sticking in the Samian vase in the consortio's vestibulum to cover minor expenses such as an emergency new thong for a broken sandal, a couple of lark's tongues for lunch or a minor bribe to a petty official to ensure no one sent in the centurions to break up the orgy. Even better, with all those coins looking so similar to each other, less honest employees soon realised that it might be quite a while before anyone noticed if one or two went missing, and thus the ancient and noble pastime of fiddling the Petty Cash was born.

For centuries Petty Cash enabled mankind to carry out minor transactions without needing to open up the great money chest, unlock the safe or, as the case may be, plead for hours with accounts department. And yet, despite its extraordinary usefulness, by the 21st Century Petty Cash found itself unloved: its coinage ruined the lines of ultra-skinny jeans and bulged out of micro-clutchbags, its accessibility opened it up to the light-fingered and its simple existence in physical form threatened to force banks to do something more than merely bunging ones and zeros round on the internet whilst charging their customers vast amounts for the privilege.

For years the downfall of Petty Cash had been predicted but now the forces were in place to ensure such predictions would come true. By the mid-noughties, Petty Cash found itself assailed on all sides, by micropayments on the internet, by instant transactions on mobile phones and even by London Underground, with its Oyster card payment system. The death knell was to come with the announcement by Visa and Mastercard that their credit cards would soon double as electronic cash, allowing owners to charge them up with small amounts of money and make payments up to £10 simply by touching them to a special reader. With even minor cash fiddles being quicker and easier to perform with a click of the mouse than a dip into the till, Petty Cash found itself alone and unwanted. And so it passed away.

Petty Cash will be buried at The Church of St Stephen the "What do you mean there was ten quid in there, I'm sure it was only a fiver", in a black-lacquered tin with a broken lock next to the stationery cupboard. Well-wishers are requested to send flowers and definitely not electronic money.

Those Who Knew Them: Boris Yeltsin 1931-2007

As A Dodo presents a tribute to the former Russian leader from his close friend, former governor Yuri Oligarchavich Gargleov, a Kremlin barman who became one of the most powerful men in Russia by steering billions of roubles into his personal bank account state-owned company PotatCo into the post-Soviet free market economy and by owning most of Irkutsk.

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin is dead. I raise glass to memory of greatest man I ever meet. From moment he join Communist Party in 1961 he is party animal through and through. Wherever there is party - there is Boris!

In '85 I just humble barman at Kremlin when Boris stumble out of long Politburo meeting on Afghanistan shouting, "Stuff the Taliban! What are we drinking?!" I mix him Black Russian, White Russian... then he wash down lot with quart of my dear old mother's homemade potato vodka. After that we were insepa... inspa ... you could not keep us apart. It was like love. I love his political integrity, his tireless work for Mother Russia. He love my dear old mother's homemade potato vodka. Anyway, I now personal barman to Boris and nothing separate us.

I remember one night Boris turn to me. Beautiful Black Sea night full of stars and he turn to me with that face... What handsome man...! George Clooney is pig in comparison...! And he ask me would I like to head new Soviet department researching possibility of potato-based fuels...? Me! Humble barman...! Can you believe this...?! I say yes straight away - goodbye Lada, hello Zil!

Boris was busy man. Incredible stamina. Member of Politburo. Mayor of Moscow. But he always find time to drop into offices of PotatCo to sample study new potato-based fuels. No, really. Boris was martyr to cause. He think new potato-based fuel put Russian man as high up as Mars, or at least make him unstoppable karaoke champion on trade visit to Tokyo. What night and two days that was!

But then Boris, who love Russian country and people, grow impatient with Gorbachev - that bas... is not fit for print... Gorbachev's refuse to reform glorious Soviet Union. He make example of Boris. Boris ridiculed in press as unfit for office. But I know he is not drunkard. He come to me day he lose job as Mayor of Moscow and say, "Yuri Oligarchavich, if I am drunkard, hit me in face with shovel! If I am unfit, I crumble and fall to floor! Hit me again! Like man! Square in face with shovel! Again!" And is true. He take it like man. After that, he was unconscious unstoppable.

And then Berlin Wall fall after all-night discussions with Eric Honecker get out of hand. Boris lean against wall and... Oops! Goodbye Communism! But Gorbachev still drag feet - so Boris start to work round clock for freedom of beloved Russia and become president in 1991. And when hardliners imprison Gorbachev and launch coup against Russian people what did Boris do...? He no think of self or revenge against old blotchy head? No! He mount tank in front of parliament building. He always randy as state-owned goat after a few snifters! Little joke...! Seriously, after crushing bourgeois reactionaries Boris hero of Russian people and dissolve Soviet Union - which strange as he never add water to nothing.

Boris take on more and more work on behalf of Russia. He take whole responsibility of parliament, he say, "Thank you boys! You take easy! I do job for you!". He do everything as he drag country into new era of glorious market economy. And how did parliament repay? They refuse leave building! Is Boris's building! Boris he kind, he understanding. So he send in tanks to help re-educate political dinosaurs who not see sense in handing over vouchers for share of glorious state companies like PotatCo. So-called communists! Think only of selves! Lenin would turning in grave... if not in glass-topped sarcoph... sarpho... coffin.

No, Boris strong like bear! He never give up, not even when glorious people boiling shoes for food and selling kidneys for shelter. People say he bring nothing to Russia but crime and poverty. But this not true. He bring democracy! He bring tanks! He bring in billions of dollars from IMF. He bring me and all my friends big state-owned monopolies at knock-down price, not to mention governorship of... er, where was now, Yakutsk? Irkutsk? I know on Risk board somewhere.

But work for Russia is take toll on Boris. In dying hours of New Year's Eve 1999 he pause, put down bottle of imported Chivas Regal I give him as gift on expenses and confide in me it time to hand on baton of power to younger man who could continue great work. I agree immediately. Imagine surprise when Boris give power to that bas... is not fit for print... Vladimir Putin - who give him two bottles of imported Chivas Regal.

After that, I not see much of Boris. He busy in secure dacha, or conducting Berlin Philharmonic or Znaky's Jazz AllStars, and I always out of country on business or desperately selling assets and fleeing country to avoid being lock up in jail like Khodorkovsky.

Anyway, Boris dead. Raise glass or five to him and all pray he not being cremate.

As A Dodo note: Yuri Oligarchavich Gargleov currently lives in London, New York, Paris, Milan, and Hawaii, while his heart is officially resident in the Cayman Islands for tax reasons. Russian officials wishing to visit him should note that he hates sushi.

A Simple Cup of Coffee c. 9th Century-2007

A Simple Cup of Coffee has been drained from its simple cup for the last time after being swamped by the planet's unchecked demand for increasingly baroque and bastardised coffee hybrids including frappaccinos, mochaccinnos and latteccinos served by overworked East Europeans and South East Asians living in eternal fear of being docked pay for failing to say "Have a nice day" with the proper company-approved sincere expression.

A Simple Cup of Coffee was first brewed from the roasted beans of the coffee plant in Ethiopia in the 9th century, proving so stimulating that, after drinking just one cup, coffee exporters stayed up for six straight months, only falling asleep after flogging gallons of the new beverage as far as Egypt and Yemen.

After expanding steadily throughout the Middle East and thus helping to promote the calm and relaxed attitude which pervades the region even to this day, by the 17th century the new brew had reached Europe, with the Dutch in particular enjoying the benefits of increased blood pressure and heart rate of A Simple Cup of Coffee in their world-famous coffee houses, so much so that they were soon forced to start taking massive tokes on the nearest available spliff to calm themselves down.

Soon London merchants were gathering to discuss shipping news in Lloyd’s Coffee House, where their massive intake led them to become so excited that they set up a whole stock market, whose vast profits were able to fund the expansion of the British Empire as well as allowing the traders to afford ever greater quantities of their favourite stimulants, thus encouraging major South American exports... and several coffee growers as well.

The practice of stumbling from one’s bed half-dumb with fatigue towards the stove to brew up an energising cup spread to the New World – but not until the third cup of coffee had hit the spot. Indeed, the American War of Independence was started by the craze for a good cup of mud after jittery Bostonians rejected a shipment of tea, angrily throwing it into the harbour – even though the water wasn’t boiling and they hadn't added the milk first.

Soon the world was enslaved by this narcotic drink, with only a few plucky Britons holding out against its tyranny – preferring a refreshing beverage made with just dried leaves and boiling water... plus a large side order of gin. But as the British Empire crumbled and Britain’s rightful role as a leading world power began to fade, even this bastion of tea-drinking limeys succumbed to the great roasted flavour and became a nation of coffee-heads thanks to A Simple Cup of Coffee's addictive allure and the persuasive powers of the late actor and item of celebrity rhyming slang Gareth Hunt’s dubious wrist gesture.

But even as Britons began to crave a cup of the hard stuff in the mornings, Americans were growing tired of A Simple Cup of Coffee and began experimenting with new ways of ingesting their favourite drug, mixing it with cold sugary colas, adding it to the water supply and cross-breeding it with flavoured syrups and giving it faux Italian names with the suffix -ccino.

The fatal blow was dealt this week with the introduction of Shower Shock soap, which releases the same amount of caffeine into the bloodstream as a couple of cups of coffee – as you lather yourself in the shower to achieve that just scrubbed roasted fresh smell in the mornings. Appalled at the news, A Simple Cup of coffee expired in a wave of bitter suds.

A Simple Cup of Coffee will be buried at the St Arbucks Church of the Decaf Super Grande Skinny Mochalattefrappaespressoccino. The service will be conducted by Gunther from Friends. It is survived by a decaf super grande skinny mochalattefrappaespressoccino… and a nice cup of tea.

Gordon Brown's Budgets 1997-2007

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, yesterday buried his last Budget under a waving of order papers, a cut in the basic rate of income tax and Mr Brown's Prime Ministerial ambitions.

The first of Gordon Brown's Budgets was born in 1997, the offspring of Mr Brown's first love, a shy and retiring model of fiscal rectitude called Prudence, and the golden economic legacy passed on to the Chancellor thanks to either (a) Conservative predecessor Kenneth Clarke's brilliant economic management or (b) the change in monetary policy forced on the nation following the UK's humiliating ejection from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992 and the country having finally got over the Lawson-boom-induced recession of the early-90s*.

Year-on-year Mr Brown and Prudence set about the business of running the economy in the manner of a respectable Victorian couple. Each year Prudence would lie back and think of Adam Smith while Gordon whispered sweet nothings about post-neoclassical endogenous growth theory into her ear and each year she would give birth to a new model of fiscal rectitude. Like any proud father, Mr Brown celebrated each new birth by detailing the many fine qualities of his offspring to anyone within earshot, in speeches which have recently been released on tape by the National Health Service as a cheap alternative to Mogadon.

Hardened in his moral certainty by the encouragement of his inamorata and the praise of the International Monetary Fund, each day Mr Brown would stride through the streets of Britain in his top hat and frock coat, unmoved by the piteous cries of impoverished single mothers, the hideous smell of the non-functional lavatories of Britain's decaying schools and the disturbing sight of nurses flogging their kidneys to support themselves. All the while he satisfied himself that he was merely seeking to bring his budgets up properly by keeping to the spending limits imposed by his predecessor Mr Clarke, apparently unaware that - as Mr Clarke welll knew - the only tight restrictions members of the Major government could be expected to stick to were usually made of PVC and metal and provided by specialist shops in Soho.

What it was that softened the Chancellor's heart we may never know. Perhaps it was a visitation by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, perhaps merely the prospect of Labour being turfed out of office by all those public-sector workers still with strength enough in their bodies to drag themselves to the polling booths. Whatever the cause, by the year 2000 Mr Brown, whilst still paying lip service to his relationship with Prudence, had begun an affair with the charming Charity.

Under Charity's influence the Chancellor abandoned his old ways. Eager to impress his new love he lavished his money on the good causes he had once passed by. As their affair became more and more passionate Mr Brown threw caution to the wind, fathering a series of bouncing budgets, the apple of every teacher's and doctor's eye, while borrowing ever more heavily to fund his new, and expensive, devotion to Charity.

Yet, however delighted Charity may at first have been, all was not well. However much Mr Brown spent, he was always met with cries for more, while about him those who had once praised him for his severe and upright manner now lambasted him for his fond indulgence.

It is perhaps fitting that, in what is expected to be one of his last acts as Chancellor, Mr Brown chose to set Charity to one side - just as he had once done Prudence - choosing to impress the nation with a cut in basic-rate income tax while bamboozling them with fiscal jiggery-pokery, as he fathered the last of his Budgets with a new love, Political Self Interest.

Gordon Brown's Budgets are survived by Gordon Brown's Premiership Ambitions, George Osborne's hopes of moving into long trousers and a lot of puzzled economists staring at the Chancellor's figures and exclaiming "Whothewhatnow?"

*(readers are invited to select the reason they find best accords with their political prejudices)

The VHS Tape 1976-2007

The VHS Tape has unspooled for the last time, its glossy surface ripped from its plasticky exterior by economists at the Office of National Statistics, who have extracted it from the shopping basket of goods and services used to judge the rate of inflation and thrown it into the bin alongside brie, vegetable oil and sprouts.

The Vertical Helical Scan System, known to millions simply as "the VHS" or (every time it unaccountably failed to record the whole of one's favourite programme) "that bloody thing" - was born in 1976. From birth it was to have a hard life. Even as it emerged from the womb of the JVC corporation it was to find rival mother Sony standing over it, pillow in hand, as it prepared to smother the child in favour of its own offspring, Betamax. Fortunately, the errant Japanese corporation was dragged away to a quiet room and, despite its inferior picture, VHS was ultimately to triumph over its rival after impressing the public with the size of its recording capacity. Thus began VHS's popularity as millions marvelled at their ability to record TV programmes while they were out… and then leave them unwatched until they were taped over a few days later.

The VHS was to prove a major stepping-stone in the life of many a child. Not only did it give the average 5-year-old their first opportunity to triumph over their parents by being able to tape hour after hour of Battle of the Planets while the adults could only manage a recording that ended halfway through Bullseye, it also gave millions of impressionable adolescents the chance to broaden their cultural education by watching fifth generation pirate copies of Driller Killer and recording subtitled films on BBC2 or Channel 4 in the hope of a fleeting glimpse of arthouse nudity (hopes which, thanks to the technological precision of the pause function, were inevitably crushed).

With the birth of its younger sibling, the VHS camera, the Tape enjoyed amazing commercial success enabling people to video their own weddings and birthday parties – and then send the oh-so-hilarious results to Jeremy Beadle’s You’ve Been Framed - and later allowing unknown micro-personalities such as Abi Titmuss to become very-well-known micro-personalities when recordings of their most intimate moments somehow found their way to the desks of every newspaper and PR agency.

It was the introduction of digital technology which saw the Tape facing its final rewind. Its binary relative, The DVD, stole the show and viewers’ affections by being able to provide movies with a sharper picture, surround sound and a commentary from the director’s chauffeur’s uncle’s sister at the push of a button.

The Tape deteriorated rapidly – stretching and distorting the picture and losing its sound quality in a gale of white noise – at which point the ONS consultants agreed that it no longer had a sustainable quality of life and, for the last time, gently untangled it from the playback heads and replaced it in its tired and worn-out cardboard sleeve.

The VHS Tape will be buried at car boot sales and charity shops across the country. It is survived by The DVD-RW, Hard-Disk Recorder and accidentally recording over that episode of The Persuaders on ITV4 you really wanted to watch.

The 2012 British Olympic Spirit 2005-2007

The 2012 British Olympic Spirit was found dead this week in a partially built stadium on Hackney Marshes. Sources close to the Spirit say it had become increasingly worried after the estimated cost for the London Olympics more than trebled from £2.4bn to £9.3bn and have now risen so high that they have been selected for the Pole Vault squad.

The Spirit, the long-awaited offspring of Sebastian Coe and Tessa Jowell, was born amidst much fanfare and hoopla in July 2005 – although the fanfare and hoopla had less to do with the prospect of the nation being afforded an opportunity to display its sporting prowess to the rest of the globe and more to do with pipping the French bid at the post.

While other countries greet the prospect of hosting the Olympics as an occasion for national pride (not to mention a marvellous opportunity to rip off tourists), in ever-cheerful and optimistic Great Britain enthusiasm for the 2012 Olympic Games was, from the sound of the starting pistol, confined to construction firms and property developers gleefully shaking their heads, sucking in air and cackling, “That’s gonna cost you… We should be able to finish that by 2013… But we’ve got another job on down Wembley way…”.

With the Olympic ideal of the finest amateurs competing for nothing more than a crown of laurels and the approbation of their peers having long been replaced by the worst professionals incapable of organising a school sports day without forcing the parents to remortgage their homes and sell their kidneys, the Spirit - never strong - quickly began to wane. Rather than being galvanised into glorious action, across the land Britain's potential medal winners of the future chose instead to slump back in their sofas, turn on Richard and Judy and wonder vaguely if Citius, Altius and Fortius were three of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Attempts to consolidate all its debts into one manageable debt failed to halt the Olympic Spirit's decline. Despite plans to raise capital by introducing sponsored events including the 400m financial hurdles and the Snickers marathon, and London mayor Ken Livingstone’s plans to introduce a congestion charge for cyclists using the Olympic velodrome, the costs continued to spiral. The Spirit fell into a deeper, and deeper depression before, tragically, taking its own life, hanged by a genuine replica plastic Olympic gold medal bearing the legend “I Love the 2012 Olympics” (retail price £29.99).

The 2012 British Olympic Spirit will be buried in a pauper’s grave along with billions of taxpayers cash as construction firms and property developers dance ecstatically in a New Orleans-style celebration of the dead. It is survived by Ken Livingstone, Tessa Jowell and the knowledge that if the French had won they'd have done the whole thing with a lot more class and a lot less whinging.

As A Dodo small print: the cost of your Olympics may go up as well as up, and your home may be at risk if you do not keep up council tax repayments.

Sir Edward Elgar 1857-2007

The news of the death of Sir Edward Elgar will come as an enormous shock to all those who loved him, particularly given that he was born in 1857 and was originally believed to have died in 1934.

Famed throughout his first life for such great works as The Enigma Variations - whose Nimrod variation, when played at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday is capable of bringing a tear to the eye of everyone from Telegraph-reading, retired colonels to happy-slapping youths - and the Pomp & Circumstance Marches that gave birth to Land of Hope & Glory, Sir Edward Elgar was one of the greatest British composers. Many believe his music had an uncanny ability to connect with the British people, an ability that was doubtless the product both of his enormous (and self-taught) musical gifts and of the fact that he first started composing in earnest while working as bandmaster at the Worcester and County Lunatic Asylum. At the time of his original death in 1934 he was the country's best-loved composer and Master of the King's Musick.

Left to rest peacefully in his grave for more than 65 years, Sir Edward was only exhumed in 1999, when the authorities at the Royal Mint decided to place him on the face of the £20 note - a position from which he could look down on Charles Darwin and his £10 note and look up to Sir John Houblon and his £50 note, doubtless joining the rest of the public in wondering who the hell Sir John Houblon was and what on earth he had done to rank above one of Britain's greatest composers and one of the world's greatest scientists.

For eight years, Sir Edward did loyal service on the £20 note, whether being slid into wallets, crumpled into pockets, rolled up in the lavatories of media haunts and snorted through or even handed over to politicians in exchange for a "baronetcy for myself and summink nice for the wife". Through all the crumplings up, impromptu origami sessions and even during many dark moments on boil wash in the washing machine while lying forgotten in a back pocket, the aged composer uttered no word of complaint.

Despite such Stakhanovite toil, Sir Edward soon found himself the victim of a whispering campaign in the Mint. He was, it was said, too old-fashioned and easy to copy - a charge which was to prove all too true when it was discovered that his image was spending more time on photocopiers than that fat bloke from accounting's arse did at office parties.

Sir Edward's doom was decreed. In March 2007 he was cast aside by the Royal Mint, to be replaced by the great Scottish economist Adam Smith - the man who first felt the invisible hand of the market (though the matter has yet to be brought to court). Sir Edward will be buried in the graveyard of deceased banknote characters alongside Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Florence Nightingale and that dodgy copy of Elizabeth Fry on a five-pound note I got passed with the rest of my change in the pub last night.